Nigeria: Udo-Obong Wants American Style for Local Athletics
Daily Trust (Abuja)
4 September 2008
Posted to the web 5 September 2008
Sydney 2000 Olympic Games gold medalist (by default), Enefiok Udo-Obong has charged the Athletic Federation of Nigeria has been advised to adopt the American system to attain the country’s former height in track and field.
He stated in an interview with brilafm.net that the success of Jamaica at Beijing 2008 is based on the American method of approach, noting that the tiny Caribbean island country cleared the sprint events because they understudied the United States.
"The truth of the matter is that we just have to go back to under-studying the Ame-ricans. I remember that we used to have better results on the tracks when most of our athletes were studying in American universities.
"We have stopped doing that in recent years and now the poor results have shown that we just have to go back to what the Americans are doing.
"The Jamaicans have been using the American system, even the coaches are training in America. We can also take our coaches to America.
"Innocent Egbunike is there, he is a coach and our athletes can go there because he has the facilities and everything. I feel the best thing to do is if you want sea shells you will have to go to the seas shore.
“You have to spend money to bring our athletes together and make them better. The Americans spent 200,000 dollars to train their athletes, we can do something similar,” Udo-Obong expatiated.
The tall quarter miler, who also won bronze medal at the Athens 2004 Olympics went on to identify lack of proper preparation as Nigeria’s biggest bane in Beijing, saying the nation must now swing into action for London 2012.